The best metrics for growth | Issue #149
What Are The Best Metrics For Growing Your Business?
Here’s a question. Are you measuring anything on a weekly, monthly or quarterly basis? Has this led you to change your business?
The thing about metrics is they need to be frequent and impactful. Always. If they’re not telling you something that’s going to make you change, they’re a waste of time. They need to focus on the stuff that makes a difference, even if this is difficult.
Too often we find our clients are measuring things they’ve always measured without really knowing why. The easy things. They’ll spout statistics proudly but many of them are meaningless. It’s like the story of the drunk man looking for his keys under a lamppost. He didn’t drop them there, but it’s where the light is!
Over the years, I’ve used metrics to help me scale businesses from zero to £30m in just five years. Learn from my experience – there are only a few that you need. Metrics are crucial to everyone knowing the score and without them, you’re playing blind. But which ones are the best for growth?
How To Be A Disruptor, Not Disrupted with Eleanor Winton
Is your organisation a disruptor? Or is it being disrupted? Don’t miss Eleanor Winton, a consultant and expert in disruption, innovation and foresight, and founder of Foresightfully, a disruption consultancy, on this week’s The Melting Pot.
Eleanor has extensive experience of working with senior teams, helping stimulate creative thought and action – she was an investigator of conduct in the Scottish Government and she was part of KPMG’s financial crime forensic function. At Foresightfully, she works with organisations to understand what the future might hold for them and helps them develop strategies in response.
Because the thing about disruption is that it’s hard to spot – just look at Blockbuster, how did they not spot Netflix coming?
In today’s episode, Eleanor shares some fantastic stories about clients she’s worked with, ways to look at different challenges, what you can do to think about the future – i.e. where’s the value? How are customers thinking about value? Because that’s where companies get disrupted – the way they think about value is not always how customers see it.
At the end, as well as some cracking book recommendations, she also imparts a great tip for something to do tomorrow. We hope you enjoy listening to this episode as much as we did.
Recommended Podcasts
Finding Mastery takes you inside the minds of the world’s best athletes, business leaders, scientists, doctors, and artists pushing the perception of what’s possible. This podcast pulls back the curtain on their self-discovery process and the mental skills that allow these people to be great — things like confidence, calm, grit, focus, trust, optimism, setting a vision for your life and more. Finding Mastery is hosted by Dr. Michael Gervais, a high performance psychologist who’s clientele consists of the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks, Olympians and MVPs from every major sport, world record holders, internationally acclaimed artists and corporate leaders.
Recommended Articles
The popular business press on both sides of the Atlantic is infatuated with chief executive officers who have drunk from the Holy Grail of heroic leadership. To be sure, a single person can make a difference at times, but even such heroic CEOs as General Electric’s Jack Welch emphasize the power of team leadership in action. As Welch himself said, “We’ve developed an incredibly talented team of people running our major businesses, and, perhaps more important, there’s a healthy sense of collegiality, mutual trust, and respect for performance that pervades this organization.”
The ‘Do-Nothing’ Approach to Mounting Turnover
During the hot job market over the past several months, companies have been trying nearly every tool to keep their existing employees from going somewhere else. Raises, spot bonuses, long-term bonuses, additional training, allocating more money to causes employees care about, and now, at least in one case, free college tuition. But some experts are offering a simple but head-turning idea: do nothing.
How Susceptible Are You to the Sunk Cost Fallacy?
Have you continued with a project long after you should have abandoned it? Persevered with a relationship even after the point of no return? Dragged yourself to an event in miserable weather just because you already bought the ticket with your hard-earned cash? These are all examples of the “sunk cost effect,” which occurs when someone chooses to do or continue something just because they have invested (unrecoverable) resources in it in the past.
Recommended Reads
Leaders aren’t short on access to change management advice, but the jury has long been out as to which approach is the best one to follow. With the publication of Beyond Performance 2.0, the verdict is well and truly in. By applying the approach detailed by authors, Scott Keller and Bill Schaninger, the evidence shows that leaders can more than double their odds of success—from thirty percent to almost eighty. Whereas the first edition of Beyond Performance introduced the authors’ “Five Frames of Performance and Health” approach to change management, the fully revised and updated Beyond Performance 2.0 has been transformed into a truly practical “how to” guide for leaders. Every aspect of how to lead change at scale is covered in a step-by-step manner, always accompanied by practical tools and real-life examples.
This liberating book shows us that examining our attitudes toward money―earning it, spending it, and giving it away―offers surprising insight into our lives. Through personal stories and practical advice, Lynne Twist asks us to discover our relationship with money, understand how we use it, and by assessing our core human values, align our relationship with it to our desired goals. In doing so, we can transform our lives. The Soul of Money now includes a foreword from Jack Canfield and a new introduction by Lynne Twist, in which she explores the effects of the Great Recession and environmental concerns about our monetary needs and aims.
Get your ‘Prescription For Growth’
15th September, New Forest 8.30am – 5.00pm
Do you ever ask yourself, “if I double the number of sellers, will I double my revenue?”. If you paused, hesitated, or said no, then you should join the next Prescription For Growth workshop with Justin Roff-Marsh.
Justin is back at Foundry Farm to walk you through the revolutionary ideas from his book The Machine and help you build a simple plan for 11X selling conversations for your team and significantly grow sales.
What you will learn:
- A growth formula that you can follow to generate up to 11 times more selling conversations for your salespeople.
- A plan for restructuring sales to cover more territory and increase sales without a proportionate increase in payroll costs.
- Steps to follow to improve operational performance and deliver >90 ontime case completion performance.
- How to generate sales opportunities on a just-in-time basis (and why marketing must subordinate to sales).
- How to use one set of KPIs to drive growth and the role of management.
MEANINGFUL ACTION FOR MONDAY
Set up an employee happiness app
Do you have a monthly employee satisfaction score? And do you know if it’s any good or not? There are loads of tools out there to help with this. Our top tip is Friday Pulse – it’s simple, engaging to use and a mine of useful data. Whatever tool you’re using, look at your participation rate. If it’s not up in the 70s, you’ve got work to do. Slice the data into teams and look at which ones aren’t participating. This is a great indicator of poor management. Work on increasing employee happiness and see productivity surge!
Upcoming Events
We’re so excited to invite you to this exploration of ideas between Greg and Dominic. They will be talking about all things business growth to give you the insight, energy, and passion you need to come out of the pandemic stronger. Greg is a scaling and financial expert. Author of Simple Numbers, Straight Talk, Big Profits and Simple Numbers 2.0., Rules for Smart Scaling, Greg Crabtree, also co-authored the chapter on Cash in Verne Harnish’s Scaling Up. Mastering the Rockefeller Habits 2.0. You don’t need a background in finance or accounting. Greg is famed for his down-to-earth, jargon-free rewriting of business finance. Join his LIVE conversation, with the equally straight-talking, Dominic Monkhouse to understand how to measure success to keep your company scaling, and get clarity on what you should be trying to achieve.
Quote of the week
“If you don’t collect any metrics, you’re flying blind. If you collect and focus on too many, they may be obstructing your field of view.”
Scott M. Graffius
Dominic Monkhouse
Dominic offers business coaching and management development, strategy planning and organisational change, using tried and tested methods to launch your organisation onto an unparalleled growth trajectory. His programme is a function of his broad experience, his deep expertise and a proven process used by over 2,700 firms worldwide.